Morogoe ni naku beki mono o uguisu wa mutsuki to mo mada shirazu ya aruramu

English Translation

We were to have cried
together, voice with voice; and
yet the warbler, it
seems, does not know even now
that the month of bonds has come.

Meaning

We were to have cried together, voice with voice; and yet the warbler seems not to know even now that the month of bonds has come.

Commentary

84 Hearing the Warbler on the Fifteenth of the First Month

On the fifteenth of the first month there was an earthquake. Looking out, she saw the moon shining beautifully and the hills wrapped everywhere in haze. Kaneie, meanwhile, had not appeared since the eighth month of the previous year, and the new year had come to nothing; and as the tears fell without stopping she composed a poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. His visits had ceased ever since she moved to Hirohata Nakagawa in the eighth month of the previous year. The warbler announces the spring, and its call was awaited in the first month.
It is the night of the fifteenth of the first month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the author's house at Hirohata Nakagawa.
There had been an earthquake that day. Looking out, she saw the moon shining beautifully and the hills wrapped in haze. Kaneie had not appeared since the eighth month of the previous year, and the new year had come to nothing; and as the tears fell without stopping she composed this.
It was sent to no one and stayed within her. Afterward Michitsuna becomes Assistant Master of the Right Stables, and the account moves to the spring pilgrimage.

The opening means with voices joined, two voices sounding together. The verb in the second line means both that a bird sings and that a person weeps, and on it the poem turns: on the surface she and the warbler should be singing together, and beneath it there is no one left to weep with her. The particle that follows is adversative — so it should be, and yet. The third makes the warbler the subject and passes to the fourth, which names the first month; since that name contains the word for being close and affectionate, it takes on the sense of a month made for intimacy, and after a new year begun with his visits at an end the word tells. The close conjectures, addressing the bird, that it does not yet know. By saying that the silent warbler must be unaware the month has come, she leaves it to be understood that she too knows nothing of the intimacy the month is named for. The poem is set within the scene of the night of the earthquake, after the beautiful moon and the haze have been named.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other